Lawn mowers are well known gardening and landscaping devices used to cut grass; as used herein, the term lawn mower is intended to include a housing with generally vertically depending sides supported by a plurality of wheels. A prime mover such as a gas powered engine or electric motor is mounted to the housing in driving connection with one or more blades disposed in a processing chamber beneath the housing for cutting the grass. The lawn mower may comprise a handle for pushing the housing over the surface of the lawn (walk behind lawn mower) which may or may not have wheels driven by the prime mover, or the lawn mower may be of the self propelled type including mowers such as a tractor (riding lawn mower).
In a conventional lawn mower, a discharge opening is formed in a side wall of the housing, and the blades disposed in the processing chamber ingest and discharge significant amounts of air to carry suspended grass clippings through the discharge opening. A collection bag or other device may be fixed in communication with the discharge opening to collect the grass clippngs.
It is a primary object of the invention to provide an apparatus for attachment to a discharge opening in a mower housing which finely cuts materials including cut grass, leaves and like vegetation discharge from the mower, and thereafter evenly distributes the fine cut materials across a wide discharge path;
It is another object of the invention to provide an apparatus of the aforementioned type having a driven impeller and cutting blade wherein the impeller produces a high velocity air stream to draw materials discharged from the mower discharge past the cutting blade and thereafter forces the fine cut materials through a discharge opening in a housing of the apparatus;
It is a further object of the invention to provide an improved, low cost processor for attachment to the discharge opening in a mower housing to effect further reduction to a small size of discharged materials, which reduced materials are distributed over the lawn to provide nutrients and act as a natural mulch for the soil.
Other objects will be in part obvious and in part pointed out in more detail hereinafter.
A better understanding of the objects, advantages, features, properties and relations of the invention will be obtained from the following descriptions and accompanying drawings which set forth certain illustrative embodiments and are indicative of the various ways in which the principals of the invention are employed.